On the football field, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone more talented than Antonio Brown. During his prime, Brown was arguably the best player in the NFL. However, his attitude off the field ended up destroying his legacy. The start of his fall began after the Steelers traded Brown to the Oakland Raiders in 2019. Shockingly, the Raiders cut Brown before he ever played for them. Jon Gruden, who was the Raiders’ head coach at that time, looks back at that as one of the most frustrating times of his career.
“I never got around Antonio [Brown] enough,” Gruden said recently on Bussin’ with the Boys. “Antonio showed up on a hot air ballon. He had his feet fried; he had cryotherapy. I never even heard of cryotherapy. And he had an issue with his helmet.
“He wasn’t happy the NFL wouldn’t let him wear his helmet. So, we really never got him around the guys very much. I didn’t have very much interaction with him at all. Really, one of the most frustrating things of my coaching career was not getting him to play for us.”
Gruden’s NFL coaching career began in 1990, so it says a lot that the ordeal with Brown was one of the most infuriating things he had to deal with. It’s easy to see why. Just look at the circus Brown brought to Oakland. He was only with the Raiders from March 2019 to September. Over basically just the summer, Brown created several controversies for the Raiders.
The Steelers traded Brown to the Raiders for a third- and a fifth-round pick in that year’s draft. Brown was coming off a season in which he posted 104 catches for 1,297 yards and 15 touchdowns. On paper, the Raiders got the better end of that deal. However, all that glitters is not gold.
Gruden is telling the truth that Brown arrived at training camp in a hot air balloon. That’s ridiculous but par for the course for Brown at that point. The real issues started shortly after that.
Due to a cryotherapy accident, Brown’s feet were injured, and he missed most of training camp. At the same time, Brown was fighting with the league to wear his specific helmet. The issue was that it did not meet NFL safety standards.
Eventually, those issues got resolved, but the problems didn’t stop there. Brown was fined by Raiders general manager Mike Mayock for unexcused absences from practice. As a result, Brown became frustrated with Mayock and the Raiders, reportedly getting into a verbal confrontation with the general manager.
Not long after that, with frustrations mounting, Brown demanded his release from the Raiders. The team granted his request, cutting him just days before the regular season started.
Brown had all the talent in the world, so it makes sense why the situation still frustrates Gruden. He was supposed to help raise the Raiders from the basement of the AFC West in their final year in Oakland. Instead, they finished that season with a 7-9 record, moving to Las Vegas in 2020. Frustrating might be an understatement when describing Brown’s abbreviated time with the Raiders.
